Pilot Witnesses Flight 93's Final Moments

The Pittsburgh Channel
September 19, 2001, updated September 20, 2001
http://html.thepittsburghchannel.com/pit/news/stories/news-96633920010919-140933.html

 

PITTSBURGH -- A pilot of a single-engine Piper might have been the last person to see United Flight 93 before it crashed in Somerset County on Sept. 11.

Local pilot Bill Wright (pictured, left) told Team 4 investigator Paul Van Osdol that he thinks that he witnessed a struggle for control of the plane.

Wright was flying over Youngwood, Westmoreland County, and was getting ready to land in Latrobe under order from air traffic control.

Then, an air-traffic controller asked him and his passenger to look out the window.

Wright was flying a Piper Arrow when he spotted a jet crossing behind him -- about three miles away. It was close enough for him and his photographer to see the United Airlines colors.

Wright was flying over Youngwood for about 20 minutes before Flight 93 crashed in Stonycreek Township.

Wright said that he knew that there was a problem when air traffic controllers asked him to give them Flight 93's altitude.

Wright thinks there's only one reason air traffic controllers in Cleveland would have been asking him about the altitude. He said that it was probably because the terrorists had cut off all radio transmissions to air traffic controllers.

"We figured there was a hijacking in progress, and we were seeing it happening, but that's all we knew," Wright said.

Wright got another clue when he and his passenger saw the path that the plane was taking.

"(It) went behind us. (We) lost sight for a while and when it came back (the passenger) said, 'It's turning toward us. Now it's turning away. Now turning back toward us.' So it was rocking its wings.

"It would bank hard left, bank hard right and then back to hard left. We saw it bank three or four times before we got away from it."

Wright said that may have been when several passengers were fighting back against the terrorists.

"The story of the plane being taken over, that fits," Wright said.

Within moments controllers ordered Wright to land immediately.

"That's one of the first things that went through my mind when they told us to get as far away from it as fast as we could -- that either they were expecting it to blow up or they were going to shoot it down, but that's pure speculation," Wright said.

Witness accounts have the plane flying over Johnstown, Pa., before crashing in Stonycreek Township.

Wright said that he wishes that he could have done something about Flight 93, but there wasn't much more he could do in a single-engine Piper.

On Thursday at 3 p.m., a memorial service will be held at the site. It will be attended by Gov. Tom Ridge, the vice president's wife, Lynn Cheney, FBI Director Robert Muller and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Father Talks About Son, Crash Site

Jerry Bingham said that visiting the wreckage of United Flight 93 in western Pennsylvania is the closest he can get to his lost son.

"It is pretty much all we have. This is where the plane went down. This is where my son is. This is where he died and we have to accept it," said Bingham, of Wildwood, Fla. "It could be worse because there are people who don't know where their family member is."

Mark Bingham, 31, of San Francisco, was one of 44 who died when the plane was hijacked and crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh last week.

Bingham was one of four passengers who called from the plane from cell phones during the hijacking. He called his mother, Alice Hoglan, in California in the moments before the crash and told her that he loved her.

Jerry Bingham said that his son doesn't deserve to be singled out as a hero any more than the other passengers on the flight.

"Everyone on that plane was a hero," said his wife, Mark's stepmother, Karen Bingham.

FEMA Head, Schweiker Visit Somerset Crash Site

Federal Emergency Management Agency director Joe M. Allbaugh and Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker visited the crash site of United Flight 93 on Wednesday to thank recovery crews for their efforts.

"I am inspired by the work you've done," Schweiker told Red Cross workers.

Added Allbaugh, "You've done yeoman's duty here. ... The entire country appreciated what Pennsylvania has done at the site."

Schweiker -- who also oversees the state's disaster planning and recovery efforts as chairman of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Council -- broke down and wept when asked about rescue efforts.

"I wish we could have done more," he said. He explained that his job typically involves responding to fires and floods -- where there are people who can be helped.

"It was so final last Tuesday," he said.

Schweiker and Allbaugh visited the crash site memorial, were family members visited the day before and left behind photographs and memorabilia for their lost loved ones. He said he was certain that Flight 93's passengers fought their captors and thwarted the hijackers from attacking Washington.

"In the skies over top of Pennsylvania, we began to fight back," he said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft is scheduled to visit the crash site with FBI Director Robert Mueller and Gov. Tom Ridge on Thursday. Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, is also expected to visit, according to a Red Cross spokeswoman.

Pilot's Widow Seeks Answers

The widow of the co-pilot whose plane went down near Pittsburgh wants to know what happened during the crew's struggle with hijackers.

Melodie Homer of Marlton, N.J., said she wants to hear what's on the cockpit voice recorder, which was recovered after last week's crash in Shanksville, Pa.

"I have to know, because I think sometimes what you imagine is even worse," Melodie Homer said Wednesday on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America."

Leroy Homer, 36, was an Air Force Academy graduate who, as a young boy, passed time at a nearby airport to escape his seven sisters. By age 16, he had a license to fly small planes.

Given his training, Melodie Homer believes her husband would not have let the plane crash into a public building if he could help it.

"He's a military man. He's very brave. He would have done whatever he could do to not have that plane harm any more people," she said.

Passengers on the United Airlines Flight 93, which had left Newark, N.J., bound for San Francisco, made cell phone calls during the flight indicating the pilots had been taken out of the cockpit. One passenger said he and two others were going to try to thwart the hijackers' plans.

All 45 people aboard died when the plane crashed into a rural field in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Melodie Homer said she contacted United shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City to check on her husband's well-being, and was told the airline would try to get a message to him.

When she heard about the crash near Pittsburgh a short time later, she was hopeful about her husband's safety.

"I figured, based on the time he had taken off, he would have been way past Pittsburgh at that point. He would have been somewhere in the Midwest ... ," she said.

Investigators said the plane had gone further west before the hijackers turned it around.

"And then I saw it on CNN myself, (that) his flight number had gone down in Pittsburgh," Melodie Homer said.

The couple had been looking forward to the first birthday of their daughter, now 10 months old.

Melodie Homer said that a memorial service is scheduled at a church in Canada, where she and her husband were married, and a second one is planned for New Jersey.

Leroy Homer, a native of Hauppage, N.Y., was an Air Force reservist and a recruiter for the Air Force Academy.

 

© Copyright 2001

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